When Theeba Ragunathan was at university studying la w, she expressed an interest in pursuing a career as a criminal practitioner.

Her tutor, though, told her not to bother, as most of the work is legally aided.

'You'd be earning less than a secretary,' he warned.Ms Ragunathan, now chairwoman of the Trainee Solicitors Group (TSG), says matters have not improved for candidates looking to go into areas such as crime and family, many of which do not pay much more than the £12,000 (£13,600 in London) minimum wage prescribed by the Law Society.The Legal Aid Practitioners Group's (LAPG) annual conference heard last month that financial constraints have led to a growing crisis in the recruitment of solicitors willing to take on publicly funded work (see [2001] Gazette, 18 October, 1).Group chairman David Emmerson told delegates that crippling student debts accrued through university and the legal practice course (LPC) mean that new recruits are abandoning the legal aid sector in favour of the City and commercial law firms.Karen Mackay, director of the Legal Action Group (LAG), says she first noticed a rise in recruitment advertising in the group's magazine, and a drop in subscriptions from new legal aid members, 18 months ago.She, too, puts the problem down to student debts discouraging candidates from going into poorly paid legal aid practice.'If you have debts of £10,000, you are going to take a job with a City or corporate firm that is offering you £30,000,' she says.

'It is the economics of the situation driving things.

In London, they don't pay that well compared to City firms, and outside of London they can't compete full stop.'LAPG director Richard Miller says the problem has become even more obvious in the last few weeks.'I give a number of talks to law students about going into legal aid practice, and the last couple of times they have told me it would be very difficult because of the burden of student debt,' he says.This week the Law Society said it recognises the problem, and will be stepping up negotiations 'to get a better deal for legal aid practitioners'.

However, the College of Law urges the sector not to panic, saying that timetables for applying to legal aid firms are different from those for City firms, so the figures of how many students have signed up to legal aid practices can be deceptive.

The college maintains that there will always be a certain type of entrant driven towards legal aid work.Rachel Page, head of careers at the college, explains: 'Students with a desire for legal aid work as opposed to corporate and commercial are motivated by entirely different things -- for example, a desire to have a higher degree of client contact, commitment to justice for all, and so on, as opposed to wanting a City environment, corporate clients, and financial rewards.'But Ms Page adds that many entering the legal aid arena do so only after exhausting other avenues, as it provides more openings for training contracts.'For example, some legal aid firms will consider that work experience, life experience, people skills and so on are as important to the firm -- if not more so -- than being a top academic, who may or may not have the right background experience and skills to deal with legal aid work,' she says.Ms Ragunathan backs this, but adds that often, the primary motivation to go for City firms in the first instance is financial.

Whereas many of those who get a training contract with a corporate firm, actually want to do the kind of family and crime work offered by legal aid firms.'The majority of [legal aid trainees] are happy with the work the y are doing, and with the career choice they have made,' she says.

'At the opposite end, many people from City firms don't always feel this way as they have gone there purely for financial reasons, because of debt.'However, according to Peter Watson-Lee, chairman of the Law Society's family law committee, the appeal of legal aid -- interesting work, providing a service to society, helping the underdog -- can be fast overshadowed by low pay, administrative burdens, and the effects of financial hardship on the firm as a whole.'Most firms don't just do legal aid work, they also do a large amount of private client work,' he explains.'The partners working in areas like commercial and conveyancing look at the legal aid people and say: "I'm supporting you." And while they don't mind supporting legal aid for a while, they can't do it all the time, and shouldn't have to.'Mr Watson-Lee says this means that even if legal aid firms manage to get recruits into their ranks, many will not hang around for long.'When they're young, enthusiastic and newly qualified, they just want to make a start,' he says.

'But in a year or two they realise that the pay and returns are dependent on fee income, so they go on and do something else.

People coming straight out of college don't appreciate what it's like.'Franklin Sinclair, chairman of the Criminal Law Solicitors Association (CLSA), says that advising LPC students to do criminal law work would not rest easy on his conscience.'I am glad I'm not involved in a recruitment campaign for criminal law solicitors at the moment because I would have great difficulty in recommending it,' he says.'It is certainly less rewarding now because there are no real prospects for young solicitors in criminal law.

There is uncertainty about the way we are going to be funded in the future, and I wouldn't tell them to do it in case the whole thing collapses in a few years time.'One firm which is feeling the bite is Kent-based criminal law specialist practice Robin Murray & Co, which has spent the past six months trying to find a duty solicitor.Partner Robin Murray wrote to the CLSA to point out: 'We have non-duty solicitors applying for the job, and we have the occasional trainee applying for the position, but qualified and experienced criminal lawyers do not exist so far as recruitment is concerned.'Mr Sinclair predicts a severe depletion in the number of criminal law solicitors if the trend continues.

He blames much of the problem on criminal contracting, where solicitors are paid set rates per month, which are calculated on the average billing from in the year from November 1999.'It can work, it can be saved, but they need to look at it all again, look at the money they are offering, look at the way it is structured,' he argues.The Legal Services Commission (LSC) disputes this, saying that any recruitment problems already existed before contracting was introduced, and that the new regime has only made them more obvious.Lord Chancellor's Department minister Baroness Scotland, who appeased delegates at the LAPG conference by saying that she would be paying 'urgent attention' to the issue, last week told the Gazette that there was not a crisis, and pointed to the fact that most legal aid practitioners have been given a pay rise in the last year.She added: 'We will take into account arguments about recruitment when next considering rates, and we will wish to talk to the LSC and the Law Society about the nature and size of any recruitment problem and what options are available for dealing with it.

Rates of pay are not the only issue.'However, most practitioners would disagree.

The TSG maintains that the only way legal aid can become a viable option is for the government to increase the pay, along with getting rid of tax on their commercial loans to ease the debt burden.Mr Watson-Lee would back this.

'In all fairness, we had a 10% payrise this year, but pay was frozen for the ten years previous to this,' he says.

'We still make well under half of what other solicitors get for private client work.'Ms Mackay says it is also important to promote equality of opportunity, as a lack of entrants now will lead to a bigger dearth of senior legal aid practitioners ten years down the line.'This country made it so difficult for doctors to get into the profession, now it is stuck looking overseas because there is a shortage of 20,000-30,000 doctors,' she says.

'We should be learning from what has happened with the medics, and stop pulling up the drawbridge on people.'Ms Mackay proposes measures to entice groups who are disadvantaged in the legal employment market, such as ethnic minorities and older women, and schemes such as bursaries which will make a real financial difference.Mr Miller suggests this could be taken one step further, with help along the same lines afforded to workers such as doctors, police officers and firefighters.'There is a lot to be said for help with housing costs and things like that because it is very difficult to live on that kind of money,' he says.

'But in practice I can't see this happening because there is a difference between those employed by the state and those employed by private organisations, even though legal aid solicitors are funded by the state.'At the LAPG conference, Baroness Scotland told delegates that legal advice will always have to take a back seat to education and health when it comes to the public coffers.However, with commentators increasingly pointing to the link between these government priorities and obtaining justice -- that housing disrepair cases, for example, can lead to health problems, or that legal wrangles in criminal courts can impact on mental health -- the lobby calling for a level playing field for all clients believes it has never had a stronger case.